Isabey did not see Angela any more that night, and did not in truth feel able to stand further excitement.
Mummy Tulip was as good as her word, and took entire charge of him, and when she had given him his supper and had bathed him in the big washtub as she had threatened, and had covered him up in the great soft bed, Isabey felt that most exquisite of all bodily sensations, release from pain. He had not slept an unbroken night through since his leg and arm had been torn by a shell, but by the time he realized his delicious well-being, sleep came upon him. Nor did he open his eyes again until next morning. The fire was again dancing in the chimney and Mammy Tulip was standing by his bedside and holding a cup of something hot.
“It sutney is Gord’s mercy,” she said to him, “dat you an’ ole Marse git heah lars’ night. De snow begin fallin’ a’ter sundown an’ ain’ stop one single minit sence. De boys had to shovel a path in de snow so ter git f’om de kitchen to de house, an’ dey had to breck de ice in de waterin’ troughs fur de ho’ses an’ cows an’ sich.”
Isabey felt if anything an increase in his ease of body and mind at what Mammy Tulip told him. There was something ineffably seductive in the thought that he was, as it were, shut in from the whole world by the rampart of snow and ice. That he could lie in the soft bed and rise when he chose, and be washed and dressed like an infant, and take that short and easy journey into the study where he would find the companionship of books and Lyddon’s strong talk and Colonel Tremaine’s warm courtesy and best of all—Angela.
For many months he had marched and fought and starved by day and night. In summer heats, in autumn’s drenching rains and chilling nights he had ridden and tramped through mud and latterly through snow, and had known hunger and sleeplessness and, with all, incessant fighting. Then had come a day of battle when almost the last shot that was fired had nearly torn him to pieces. Following had come a time of fearful suffering in a wretched shanty, where all that could be done for him was an occasional hurried dressing of his wounds by a surgeon who had learned to do without food or sleep. Around Isabey had been others suffering as miserably as himself, and his mind was distracted from his own tortures by watching with pity others more tortured than himself.
Now, however, all this seemed a painful dream, and here he was in warmth and peace and ease and paradise for a little time, and when these should have done their work he would be ready once more for hard campaigning.
CHAPTER XIV
SNOWBOUND
ISABEY remembered that it was Christmas morning. Snow had been falling all the night through and lay white and deathlike over the land.
The Christmas was unlike any Christmas which Harrowby had ever known. There were neither wreaths nor decorations nor any Christmas cheer. After breakfast, the negro children came into the hall, where Angela distributed their Christmas stockings with such homely sweets as she could provide, and the children went away quietly.
The shadow of the war was upon them, too, and they understood dimly in their childish way the vague unrest, the fears, the agitating hopes of their elders, to whom the universe was changing daily and who knew that things would never be as they had once been.